Quote from: flyingmice;376494Oh, I remember those articles. I tossed a complete library of Dragons dating back to the late seventies about 5 years ago.

-clash

Defiler!
Why didn't you tell me! I'd found a way to pay for postage! Even if I don't use AD&D/D&D much, I'd still loved the old Ares section, MSH sections, and stories!

*weeps*

I think Old School / New School is just the new GNS.  It's a vague argument over the right way to pretend you're an elf.

Now, I do think there are broad movements in game design: random class and level games, life path and skill games, point balanced skill games, point balanced class and level games, open concept character creation, unified mechanic games, abstract combat games, tactical combat games, games with social skills, games with no social skills, games with social combat mechanics, open ended games, closed concept games (in the sense that you aren't really ment to make up your own stuff generally this is a feature of setting specific games but AD&D had a bad case of it).

So let's see

Tunnels and Trolls is a random class and level game with abstract combat and open ended play.

Dungeons & Dragons is a random class and level game with tactical combat (which nobody uses) and closed concept play.

The Fantasy Trip is a point balanced skill game with tactical combat and closed concept play.

Runequest is a random skill game with tactical combat and closed concept play.

Gamma World is a random game without skills or classes but with levels and open concept play.

Anyhow, I think that shows that just about all of the variations seem to come up before 1980.  The one that doesn't happen is open concept character creation with closed concept play which is what most of the Forge games seem to be.

"New school's" main feature seems to be the movement of core material into supplements in order to force the purchase of additional books.  I would argue that one feature of old school would be "self contained."

Quote from: Silverlion;376497Defiler!
Why didn't you tell me! I'd found a way to pay for postage! Even if I don't use AD&D/D&D much, I'd still loved the old Ares section, MSH sections, and stories!

*weeps*

You can get them on CD-rom a lot cheaper than it would cost to ship them, Tim! That's being silly!

-clash

Quote from: David Johansen;376498I think Old School / New School is just the new GNS.  It's a vague argument over the right way to pretend you're an elf.

Swine Part II?  

(According to pundit's vernacular).

Quote from: flyingmice;376500You can get them on CD-rom a lot cheaper than it would cost to ship them, Tim! That's being silly!

-clash

I doubt that. Have you looked at the CD-Rom prices on Ebay?

Edit: I say that then go look and some are reasonable. They won't be when I have cash, but ah well.

Surely Exalted is New School and OD&D is Old School - the only way to judge a game is to compare it to these two?

as I said:

Quote from: Aos;3764261. Determining who is us and who is them.

The problem, as usual, is defining this shit based on D&D.

To be frank, D&D didn't mean a fucking thing to my gaming until I re-discovered NWN maybe 5 years ago, tops.

Quote from: J Arcane;376512The problem, as usual, is defining this shit based on D&D.

To be frank, D&D didn't mean a fucking thing to my gaming until I re-discovered NWN maybe 5 years ago, tops.

Especially since D&D and the rest of the RPG world have often gone in completely different directions

I don't think there is such a thing as New School.

The list of "historical trends in RPGs" oh John Kim's site might be useful in this discussion (http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/theory/fashions.html ).

To address the OP, I guess one could pick a game from each groups and explain why it works so well .

From a structuralistic perspective, anything outside the dungeon or a hex map is new school. All real and major differences come back to this fact, trumping authorship, time of publication or aesthetic. That´s also why 2e is mostly New School whereas 3.x is AD&D1E on steroids and thereby old school in so many ways nobody could ever suceed in a debate against me proving otherwise.
The interesting part is where the outer trappings of the Dungeon become conflated into non-Dungeons, this is called Encount4rdisation and it created a D&D school of it´s own that lead to Pathfinder MODULES and  the 4e SYSTEM.
If we ignore the encount4rdised D&D schools, which happen in a Dungeon but aren´t old-school, New school is everything that´s not in a Dungeon.

The baseline for New School is a focus on character creation in the main rulebook, a skills section and a combat section. Most New School stops there, but the good ones add something else, something undungeon, that is the meat of the games; its 'about' that undungeon element(s).

Keep in mind while reading the above, that:

non-Dungeon vs. not a Dungeon vs. undungeon all mean specific things different from each other.

I think it's less about a time period and more about mechanics and mindset.

I would say that unified mechanics is the demarkation point between old school and new school. That and less of a focus on DIY and more of a focus on BIY (buy it yourself).

Quote from: ggroy;376478As time went on during the 1980's, the DMs I played with were less and less dictatorial.

These days in a really railroady game, the DM isn't much more than a dice roller for the monsters and NPCs.

I never really noticed the wargamers in the D&D crowd, maybe because I was one of them. I adopted RPGs in their infancy though before many of my peers, because RPGs brought something more to my gaming table than wargames did.

I wouldn't, by any stretch of the imagination, confine dictatorial GMs to the ranks of wargamers alone... There were plenty of bad GMs that did damage by providing inconsistent or poor game rulings which ruined the experience for the players at their table. This and the screwed up game companies that promoted inconsistent play via incompetence, mismanagement, deliberate attempts to corner the market on free thinking in RPGs (Like that could be done, ha!), have pretty much given away their markets to the CRPG Industry.

Good gaming is alot like good dating when you get down to the heart of the matter.

If you want a great time, you are going to take your babe to a fine French restaurant, and follow that up with a trip to a hot nightclub, and then finally get around to some intimate time, preferably in an exotic retreat.

The food is great in a French Restuarant, because it's cooked by a chef that has spent years in training. He knows all the shortcuts to preparing great dishes, and has his prep time down to a minimum to focus on bringing a great culinary experience to a large number of people. Think of the GM in this role.
   
Then there's the hot nightclub, The band/singers have to be good, There has to be a place to dance, it has to be a hotspot where there's lots of other trendy folks with exotic backgrounds, and great stories. You can think of the rules and the campaign setting in this role. Some old settings are good, but someone is always coming up with something new as well, that's refreshing and stimulating. (Well not so much with RPGs, but hey, it could happen).

Finally there's the exotic retreat where you finish the evening. As a GM, you can think of this as your campaign or adventure. How you decorate your home, If you keep it clean, the knick-knacks that show what you value, the other decorations that show your social connections, and your artistic style and preferences all go the distance to demonstrating to your hot date whether you are a partner worthy of long-term consideration.

So too with your adventures. As a GM, you are in the entertainment business. Your exotic retreat that is your campaign has to show it. All these things combined, make for a great game, a great experience worthwhile to repeat on or at a later date.

You don't have to do it this way of course, you can always just take your date to McDonalds, and then to the Mall. Just don't act surprised, if you won't find me there...

The existence of old school doesn't imply a single new school.

Old school is where it started, but after that there was an explosion, stuff flying in all directions.  Many of those games have little to do with each other, old school has stuff in common because there were so few games early on they inevitably influenced each other and shared some common assumptions.  That's no longer true.

There is I think an old school, I don't think there is a new school, which is why nobody uses that term.

As for what gets discussed here, it goes in waves I find.  I'll be playing Bash soon, and hopefully running some S1889, I'll try to post about those when they kick off.  In the meantime it's S&W, which I appreciate is of less value in this context...

Quote from: estar;376491The Old School Primer takes the issues you mentioned and turns it into something playable. However to characterize the OSR as being about that style is a mistake. The only thing the OSR is about is playing older editions of D&D. There are several active OSR participants/publishers, like myself, who run older editions of D&D in styles that would be recognizable to anybody playing a newer RPG.

And this is what I think Old School really was and how people were playing, even back in the day.